Curitiba: Alex Zanardi weekend summary

STEEP BEGINNING... BUT WE'LL MAKE IT!
Hi everybody,
My natural optimism has been put to the test by Curitiba's weekend. Nor
myself neither my brand-mates would have ever imagined such a strong
performance from our rivals of Seat. We have to ...

STEEP BEGINNING... BUT WE'LL MAKE IT!

Hi everybody,

My natural optimism has been put to the test by Curitiba's weekend. Nor
myself neither my brand-mates would have ever imagined such a strong
performance from our rivals of Seat. We have to sportively send them our
compliments and take our hats off and all the discussions on the fact
that Curitiba is at 1000mt on the sea level and therefore this penalyzes
our aspirated engines are worthless. Tarquini, Yvan Muller, Gene and
company were flying both on straights and corners and they deserve the
merit for this.

Despite all difficulties, I am proud for representing BMW in a
championship that has always seen our brand as protagonist. Technicians
that designed our car are the same that developed some infallible models
of the past years and their skills are always the same. I am strongly
convinced that they will wisely react to organize the right sportive
counter-charge.

It is fairly unlikely that this is gonna happen since the next race,
since the Mexican round of Puebla has never brought anything good in
terms of our car's performances.

Nevertheless, I am convinced that starting from the third race at
Marrakech, we will have the material to be back among the protagonists
and, I hope I can be one of the most representative standard-bearer of
our "group counter-charge".

On a personal level, I spent my weekend changing a setup that was never
satisfactory and to find out the origin of an engine problem that
penalized a lot my acceleration and my top speed. I appreciated all the
efforts of technicians that worked to solve my problems and the power
loss due to the altitude combined with the 30Kg ballast imposed by rule
for using the sequential gearbox is the only plausible reason to explain
why my BMW was evidently struggling in accelerating as other BMWs.

Obviously, I still hope that the reason is another one and a further data
reading will help us in identifying it 'clearing' the choice of using
the sequential gearbox, that now I would struggle to forgiving me should
it turn out to be a gross mistake, especially after having several
testing days to evaluate it.

Anyway, we take the blow and we get back to work: I know that after
analyzing all data, choosing setups and modifying all what is needed to
get back competitive my team and I will find again your support and this
is why I greet you all with affection!